Happy Holidays!! I just saw a little ticker on the top of someone's blog that said "10 days until Christmas." Wait a second, that was yesterday so now we're down to 9!" How the heck did this happen? The blog owner said she was "now ready." Several of the people who commented chimed in to say that they had wrapped their last present or finished shopping... I could not believe it. With nary a gift bought, I am in total denial that the holiday is approaching!
Every year I tell myself, this will be the year that I plan ahead and actually have time to slow down and enjoy the holidays but somehow it never seems to happen. This year "my excuse" is the fact that I have the entire contents of my garage STILL littering my family and living rooms. Last month we started the Garage re-do and have gotten as far as the sheet rock and paint. The cabinets are still unassembled and unless they are completed this weekend we will be piling all the stuff back into the garage to make way for the Christmas tree.
Some of you are probably wondering why we are even going to cause our selves all this additional stress. I mean, our girl would be just as happy decorating a little table top tree and has no expectations for how things are supposed to go. Well, it is just that we also picked this year to invite my entire family out for the celebration. My mother and nephew have NEVER been to California to visit us and no one has visited since we moved into this house last October. So we want it to be awesome!
My husband and I actually used their pending visit as the motivation for doing the garage. We do this sort of thing regularly. Left to our own we would never "get to" many things, so we make up deadlines that involve other people. Getting the garage done before family arrives is one of these type of deadlines.
I am not a great housekeeper but I can use my vanity to keep things in check. If I have a house guest coming I can kick things into high gear and have the place looking pretty good in a relatively short amount of time. I just couldn't stand it if a visitor ever saw how it really is. I even do this for my husband. The hour before his return from work is spent with me "minimizing the damage." He prefers things tidy so I do my best to to keep the disaster in check. My daughter and I are craft and activity tornadoes so it is a rare day when every game, glue bottle, paper sequin and feather finds its way back to it's proper home.
The garage re-do is actually designed to help us mitigate the daily in house damage since we are now going to have a designated craft area in the new space. Alas. we are still a little while from this reality. To top things off the girl has been suffering from a terrible cold and we have been housebound for the past few days. Keeping two mess making tornadoes confined to a home does not lead to a Martha Stewart like reality. Sure we have some BEAUTIFUL glitter stars and pinecone ornaments ready for hanging when that tree presents itself, but we also have a floor covered with glitter, tables piled with drying items and scraps of paper littered about the living room. Home made cookies ARE awaiting placement in pretty gift jars but flour and sugar are being tracked all around the kitchen and family room.
All this mess combined with the piles of garage stuff is daunting, even for a good under pressure type of gal like me. Nine days to go. As I survey the place, it looks like we need nine weeks!
So how about you? With nine days to go, where do you stand?
Me? I'm going for the Christmas Miracle. I believe we're going to pull the whole thing off!
